Tag: Michigan

Review: ‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,’ starring Lauryn Licari, Owen McKenny, Kendra Licari, Shawn Licari, Jill McKenny, Dave McKenny and Bradley Peter

August 31, 2025

by Carla Hay

A 2020 photo of Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny in “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish”

Directed by Skye Borgman

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” features an all-white group of people discussing the felony stalking case of Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny (former dating schoolmates from the small town of Beal City, Michigan), who were harassed through text messages for more than a year when they were both in their early teens.

Culture Clash: Beginning in October 2020, Licari and McKenny received increasingly hostile and disturbing messages that included sexually explicit harassment and orders for Licari to commit suicide.

Culture Audience: “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in suspenseful true crime documentaries about bizarre cases.

Bradley Peter in “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” tells the twisted case of Lauryn Licari and Owen McKenny, who were in their early teens when they were anonymously stalked by someone sending hateful and violently threatening text messages for more than a year. This well-edited and fairly balanced true crime documentary has the participation of all the major people who were involved in this felony stalking case, including the person convicted of the crimes. It’s a cautionary tale about misplaced trust. Because the outcome of this case isn’t widely known around the world, this review won’t reveal who the perpetrator is, in case anyone doesn’t want to know this information before seeing this documentary.

Directed by Skye Borgman, “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” is one of other true crime documentaries directed by Borgman about bizarre cases that are well-known in some areas of the United States but didn’t get massive worldwide media attention at the time the cases were resolved. Her true crime filmography as a director includes 2017’s “Abducted in Plain Sight” and 2022’s “Girl in the Picture.” Borgman’s documentary directing style is to tell the story mostly through insightful interviews with people who were directly involved in the case, as certain bombshell information is revealed toward the end of the documentary.

“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” does not have any interviews with journalists, psychiatrists or technology experts, who wouldn’t have much more to add to this already riveting story. The documentary’s re-enactments are kept to a minimum and don’t look exploitative. By keeping the narrative intimately focused on those who were directly involved in the case, “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” doesn’t feel overstuffed. The result is a documentary that is very suspenseful without being overly sensationalistic.

The slang word “catfish” is a term that refers to deliberately having a false or hidden identity for the purposes of fooling someone, usually online. In many cases, “catfishing” is done to commit certain crimes, usually financial fraud. In the case of Licari and McKenny, their catfish stalker’s motives were to degrade, harass, and violently threaten them, with Licari getting the worst of the abuse. The documentary shows several of these unedited messages as captions, with an actor (and a disguised voice effect) reading out many of these messages.

“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” is literally about a small-town scandal that made big news. In October 2020, when the text stalking began, Licari and McKenny were 13 years old and living in the small town where they were both raised: Beal City, Michigan, which Licari describes in the documentary as being such a small town, it only has one stoplight. “Everybody knows everybody,” she says.

Beal City is an unincorporated community located in Michigan’s Isabella County. According to the 2020 U.S. Census and other data, Beal City in the 2020s has a population of a little more than 300 people. Some of the Beal City residents in the documentary say that there’s not much to do in Beal City, which is why gossip is rampant in the community, and people tend to spend an extraordinary amount of time on their phones. McKenny says he got his first phone at age 13. In the documentary, he comments: “It’s crazy how having a phone could be the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Beal City has one school for school-aged minors: Beal City School, which is for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Licari (a quiet introvert) and McKenny (a popular extrovert) were Beal City School students who had had been dating each other for about a year when they started getting the harassing messages. The anonymous sender—who used a phone number generator to send the messages from hard-to-trace, disposable phone numbers—claimed to be girl whom McKenny was in love with and said that McKenny was breaking up with Licari.

The sender’s text messages also hurled insults at Licari, by calling her “ugly” and a “bitch.” The insults got increasingly worse by having threats directed at Licari and sexually explicit content. The harasser also told blatant lies that McKenny was having secret sexual hookups with the sender of these vile messages.

At the time, Licari and McKenny (who is also interviewed in the documentary) were considered an ideal couple. They shared an interest in sports and respected each other. They seemed to be on track to go from being high school sweethearts to possibly being a married couple as adults.

Their parents also got along well with each other and approved of the couple’s relationship. Lauryn’s parents Shawn Licari and Kendra Licari are interviewed in the documentary. And so are Owen’s parents Dave McKenny and Jill McKenny. When Lauryn and Owen were a couple, their mothers had a very close friendship.

The first messages were about an annual Halloween party at a fellow student’s home. Owen was invited to the party, but Lauryn was not. Owen was going to take Lauryn to the party anyway. The harasser knew of this plan and made a threat to Lauryn to stay away from the party.

The party was hosted by Khloe Wilson, who was on the same basketball team as Lauryn. Wilson had a reputation for being a “mean girl” who had an unrequited crush on Owen, who describes her in the documentary as not being a nice person. Beal City School students Wilson, Sophie Weber and Macy Johnston (who are all interviewed in the documentary) were a trio of very close friends who spent a lot of time on their phones.

As can be expected under these circumstances, Wilson became a prime suspect to many people in the community, although she vehemently denied anything to do with the harassment. Her parents Craig Wilson and Tami Wilson are also interviewed and speak about how Khloe was the victim of a rush to judgment by people who didn’t know all the facts. Khloe and her parents fully cooperated in the investigation.

The sender of the messages knew personal details about Lauryn and Owen that only someone who spent time in person with Lauryn and/or Owen would know. It was never a question that these messages were coming from someone who knew Lauryn and Owen well enough to describe the clothes they wore on a certain day or Lauryn’s and Owen’s activities that weren’t on social media. But who could this stalker be?

The harassing text messages stopped for about 11 months after this Halloween party happened. And then, in September 2021, the harassing text messages to Lauryn and Owen began again. The harassment increased and got worse. The messages caused mistrust between Lauryn and Owen, who began arguing with each other more often and eventually broke up.

Even after the breakup, the messages didn’t stop. Owen’s father Dave says there would be up to 30 to 50 harassing messages per day—all using the same method of having anonymous, disposable phone numbers. The abusive messages continued for the next 15 months and reached a point where the sender was ordering Lauryn to kill herself.

During this period of time, Owen began dating a teenage girl in Pinconning City, Michigan, which is about 62 miles east of Beal City. This girl and her parents (who are not named and are not interviewed in the documentary) also became targets of the harassment until she and Owen ended their relationship because of the harassment. The harasser sent the same types of sexually explicit text messages where the harasser claimed to be in a relationship with Owen.

Meanwhile, the harasser kept dropping hints that seemed to identify Khole as the culprit. But were these clues authentic or were they a deliberate attempt to frame Khloe and keep the majority of the suspicions on her? Investigators were skeptical that the real culprit would leak obvious clues that would lead back to the real culprit.

Why didn’t Lauryn and Owen change their phone numbers? According to their parents, the parents felt that whoever was behind the stalking was close enough to Lauryn and Owen to be able to get any new phone numbers that Lauryn and Owen would have. The parents also say in the documentary that they felt they had a better chance of catching the culprit if the phone numbers for Lauryn and Owen stayed the same.

Eventually, school officials and law enforcement investigated. Students at Beal City School are allowed to use their phones in classrooms, says Beal City School principal Dan Bayer, who admits he’s extremely dependent on using his phone as an office tool. Bayer says that smartphones can be educational resources in classrooms. Video surveillance was used in the school to try to catch the culprit, but it didn’t work.

The parents of Lauryn and Owen got increasingly agitated and frustrated that the culprit hadn’t been caught. Owen’s mother Jill went as far as briefly impersonating Owen online in her own “undercover” investigation. At one point, she and Lauryn’s mother Kendra demanded to go to Beal City School to search the students’ phones themselves. That type of search would be illegal, as the school’s superintendent Bill Chillman points out in the documentary, so this demand was rejected without hesitation.

Other people interviewed in the documentary are FBI liaison Bradley Peter, an investigator from the police department of Bay City, Michigan; Sheriff Mike Main of Isabella County; prosecutor Dave Barberi; Owen’s cousin Adrianna; Kendra’s cousin Melissa Perry; and Sophie Weber’s mother Korin Weber, who describes herself as Jill McKenny’s best friend. Peter is credited by several people in the documentary with being the investigation’s MVP. Khloe’s parents Craig and Tami bitterly complain that the case wouldn’t have been solved if Sheriff Main had been kept in charge.

The harasser, who was eventually arrested in December 2022, is revealed in the last half of the documentary. The documentary includes police body cam footage of the perpetrator being questioned and eventually confessing in the perpetrator’s home. “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” has some indications but doesn’t fully explore the psychological aspects of these crimes and the aftermath, such as if anyone has gotten any helpful therapy counseling. There is also background information about the perpetrator that should have been better investigated or explained in the documentary.

It’s enough to say that many viewers will probably think the perpetrator is still being very manipulative. Even though the perpetrator made a public apology in a courtroom (the documentary shows this footage) and expresses some remorse in the perpetrator’s documentary interview, it’s questionable if the perpetrator is fully redeemed. According to investigators, the perpetrator continues to lie by saying that an unidentified person wrote the first set of harassing texts in October 2020—even though all the evidence points to one person (the perpetrator) writing all the harassing texts from the beginning.

Many true crime documentaries are stretched out to three or more episodes when they could have been the length of a feature film that’s less than two hours. “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” (which is 94 minutes) uses its time wisely by presenting a fascinating but disturbing story with clearly explained details about the investigation, how the perpetrator was caught, and what the legal consequences were. Even though this criminal case is now closed, what many viewers might find the most unsettling about the documentary is the perpetrator is still making excuses for this cruel harassment, and there might never be any closure for many of the people who were damaged by these crimes.

Netflix premiered “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” on August 29, 2025.

Review: ‘Unknown Serial Killers of America,’ a true crime documentary series about lesser-known serial killers

May 21, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Unknown Serial Killers of America” (Photo courtesy of Oxygen Media)

“Unknown Serial Killers of America”

Culture Representation: The documentary series “Unknown Serial Killers of America” features a predominantly white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Various people share their stories about being involved in investigations of serial killers whose names aren’t widely known by the general public. 

Culture Audience: “Unknown Serial Killers of America” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about how serial killers are investigated.

“Unknown Serial Killers of America” tells stories about seeking justice for crimes committed by lesser-known serial killers, with a different story per episode. The series follows a familiar true crime format but values the victims and their loved ones. It’s a straightforward, no-frills and well-edited series that can be recommended for true crime aficionados who want to find out more about serial killer cases that haven’t been overexposed in the media

“Unknown Serial Killers of America” is produced by Pantheon Media Group. Haylee Vance is the showrunner of the series. The Oxygen network only made the series premiere episode available for review in advance of the series premiere, so this review will cover this first episode, which is titled “Carl Watts.” Each episode is named after the serial killer who is the featured murderer in each episode.

Carl Eugene Watts, nicknamed Coral Watts, was born on November 7, 1953, in Killeen, Texas. He died of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007 at a hospital in Jackson, Michigan. At the time of his death at age 53, he had been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Watts confessed to murdering 13 women from 1974 to 1982 in Michigan and Texas. However, authorities believe he could have murdered as many as 100 people.

The documentary mentions Watts (who was raised by a working-class single mother) began assaulting women when he was about 14, and he went to prison for it for the first time when he was 20. His hatred of women seems to have begun after he recovered from a bout of meningitis when he was around 8 or 9 years old, according to the documentary. Decades later, after he was arrested for being a murderer, Watts told officials who interviewed him that he believed the women he killed were demonic and he needed to get rid of their evil spirits.

In Michigan, Watts had a pattern of murdering young women who were walking somewhere alone late at night or in the early morning hours. Many of his victims were college students. Some of his victims died just a few feet away from their front doors. Because most of his murders happened on Sunday mornings, he was called the Sunday Morning Slasher in the media before he was identified.

Over time, he changed his pattern to murder women in their homes. He also changed his method of killing from stabbing to strangulation. Watts’ crimes started in Michigan (in cities such as Ferndale and Ann Arbor) before he moved to the Houston area n Texas in December 1980. His crime spree continued in the Houston area.

He got caught in Houston on May 23, 1982, when he attacked three women on the same day. One woman (20-year-old Michele Maday) did not survive when he drowned her in her apartment bathtub. He then tried to kill two roommates—21-year-old Lori Lister and 18-year-old Melinda Aguilar—in their apartment, but Aguilar was able to escape by jumping out of a second-floor window. She got help immediately, and Watts was apprehended and found guilty of murder and attempted murder.

The story didn’t end there. Due to a legal technicality in Texas, Watts was scheduled to be paroled in 2006. The legal technicality was the Texas Court of Appeals had ruled that Watt was not told that in his attempted murder of Lister by drowning her in a bathtub, he had not been told that the bathub and water combined were considered a deadly weapon. Therefore, he was reclassified as a non-violent felon who was eligible for parole. The episode describes extraordinary efforts from community activists and law enforcement to find Watts guilty of murders that he committed in Michigan.

People interviewed in this episode are Joseph “Joe” Foy, a Ferndale resident who witnessed Watts stab 36-year-old Helen Dutcher near Foy’s house in 1979; investigative reporter Glenna Whitley; Paul Bunten, former captain of the Ann Arbor Police Department; Donna Pendergrast, former assistant district attorney of Michigan; psychologist Dr. Harley Stock; Andy Kahan, director of Victims Services; and John Semander, Joanna Semander-Nicolaou and Maria Crawford, the siblings of murder victim Elena Semander, who was 20 years old when Watts killed her on February 6, 1982. “Unknown Serial Killers of America” does not glorify these serial killers or their crimes. Instead, the show is about how victims’ loved ones, their allies and law enforcement can work together to get justice, even if that justice is sometimes delayed.

Oxygen premiered “Unknown Serial Killers of America” on May 18, 2025.

Review: ‘Vulcanizadora,’ starring Joshua Burge and Joel Potrykus

June 15, 2024

by Carla Hay

Joel Potrykus and Joshua Burge in “Vulcanizadora” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“Vulcanizadora”

Directed by Joel Potrykus

Culture Representation: Taking place in Michigan, the dramatic film “Vulcanizadora” (a sequel to 2015’s “Buzzard”) features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two friends go on a camping trip in the woods and plan to commit a sinister act.

Culture Audience: “Vulcanizadora” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Joel Potrykus and provocative movies about the dark side of human nature.

Joshua Burge in “Vulcanizadora” (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“Vulcanizadora” is a mind-bending drama that sneaks up on viewers and goes to unpredictable places. This sequel to “Buzzard” requires patience during the meandering first third of “Vulcanizadora.” The rest of the film will keep viewers on edge.

Written and directed by Joel Potrykus, “Vulcanizadora” takes place in Michigan, and was filmed on location in the Michigan cities of Manistee and Grand Rapids. “Vulcanizadora” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. Most of the film takes place in an isolated wooded area near a beach.

“Vulcanizadora” has a relatively small number of people in the cast. Two main characters get the most screen time. Marty Jackitansky (played by Joshua Burge) is the protagonist from “Buzzard,” a movie about Marty committing crimes, such as financial fraud, by stealing and forging checks. The other main character in “Vulcanizadora” is Derek Skiba (played by Potrykus), who was a supporting character in “Buzzard.”

“Buzzard” had its world premiere at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival and was released in 2015. In “Buzzard,” Derek was Marty’s co-worker at a company called First File Mortgage, where Marty was a temp worker who stole checks and committed other fraud. Fearing that he would get caught, Marty hid at Derek’s place, while Derek lied to their boss and said that Marty was sick and unable to go to work. The rest of “Buzzard” shows what happened to Marty.

Viewers of “Vulcanizadora” don’t need to see “Buzzard” to understand what happens in “Vulcanizadora.” However, seeing “Buzzard” before seeing “Vulcanizadora” will give viewers a better understanding of who Marty and Derek are and their background stories. For the first third of “Vulcanizadora,” the movie just looks like two male friends wandering around a wooded area during a camping trip.

Derek (who is late 40s) is the more talkative of the duo. His motormouth rambling becomes very irritating after a while. Marty (who is in his late 20s) is brooding and doesn’t seem like he enjoys spending time with Derek. Even though Derek is older than Marty, Marty seems more emotionally immature than Derek.

Derek is the type of person who pretends to know more than he really does. For example, Derek doesn’t know some basic camping skills, and Marty often has to show him how to do things correctly. Derek is a music fan who often plays music loudly or sings songs. Based on his musical taste, Derek likes hard rock from the 1990s. Snippets of Godsmack’s “Voodoo” and Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike” can be heard in the movie.

Why are Derek and Marty camping in the woods? Things become interesting in the middle of the film, when more information is revealed. Derek has brought small explosive devices. He and Marty are seen testing one of these explosive devices. Marty and Derek eventually go to a beach area, where their intentions become evident.

Conversations throughout the film also reveal that Marty is still involved in criminal activity. He has an upcoming court date where he has to enter a plea to charges of arson. He’s accused of burning down a tire store. During an argument between Marty and Derek, it’s mentioned that Derek paid $700 to bail Marty out of jail.

Derek has his own personal problems: He is angry about not being able to see his son Jeremy (played by Solo Potrykus), who is about 5 or 6 years old. Derek complains to Marty that Derek’s ex-wife Lynn (played by Melissa Blanchard) has turned Jeremy against Derek. Derek also believes that Jeremy cares more about Lynn’s current husband, who buys gifts for Jeremy that Derek wouldn’t be able to afford. “Everybody just fucking ripped me off,” Derek says bitterly.

Nothing can really prepare viewers for where “Vulcanizadora” ends up going in the story. What starts out looking like a harmless camping trip turns out to be something very different. The acting performances in “Vulcanizadora” are adequate, although Burge stands out for how he depicts Marty’s complexity. Burge received a Tribeca Festival special jury mention for his “Vulcanizadora” performance. Where “Vulcanizadora” excels the most is in the writing and direction, which build layers of suspense until the movie’s final knockout scenes.

UPDATE: Oscilloscope Laboratories will release “Vulcanizadora” in select U.S. cinemas on May 2, 2025.

Review: ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter,’ starring Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Garrett Hedlund, Caren Pistorius, Brooklynn Prince and Gil Birmingham

November 22, 2023

by Carla Hay

Daisy Ridley in “The Marsh King’s Daughter” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

“The Marsh King’s Daughter”

Directed by Neil Burger

Culture Representation: Taking place in Michigan, in 2002 and in 2022, the dramatic film “The Marsh King’s Daughter” (based on the 2017 novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Native American) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Twenty years after her father was imprisoned for kidnapping her mother, a 30-year-old woman, who has tried to erase him from her life, finds out that her past has come back to haunt her when he breaks out of prison captivity to track her down.

Culture Audience: “The Marsh King’s Daughter” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching formulaic and ridiculous “women in peril” dramas.

Gil Birmingham and Daisy Ridley in “The Marsh King’s Daughter” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

It’s ironic that much of “The Marsh King’s Daughter” takes place in a backwoods marsh area, because this entire movie is a soggy mess. It starts off as a monotonous drama and devolves into a series of silly action scenes that don’t look believable. There are no real surprises in this disappointing dud, except for the surprise that some viewers might feel about how “The Marsh King’s Daughter” gets worse as the movie stumbles along to its very predictable conclusion.

Directed by Neil Burger, “The Marsh King’s Daughter” is based on Karen Dionne’s 2017 novel of the same name. Elle Smith and Mark L. Smith co-wrote the unimpressive adapted screenplay for “The Marsh King’s Daughter.” It’s more of a series of plot checklists than an engaging story that flows well. The cast members, for the most part, just go through the motions in drab performances.

The tedious first third of the movie takes place in 2002, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where a reclusive family of three people are living “off the grid” in a remote wooded area near a marsh. Helena (played by Brooklynn Prince) is a 10-year-old who adores her father Jacob “Jake” Holbrook (played by Ben Mendelsohn), who teaches her the fundamentals of hunting and fishing. Jacob also has an unusual habit of giving underage Helena a tattoo every time she kills a specific animal.

Helena has a closer emotional bond with her father than she has with her mother Beth (played by Caren Pistorius), because Helena thinks that her mother is an uptight nag. “She’s always mad at me,” Helen complains to Jacob about Beth. From the beginning, it’s shown that Jacob is abusive to Beth.

Every time it looks like Beth wants to leave to go somewhere on her own, Jacob physically and roughly restrains her and prevents her from leaving. Helena witnesses some of this abuse, but she turns a blind eye to it because her father has convinced Helena that Beth deserves to be “disciplined.” Jacob is so manipulative, he has lied to Helena by saying Beth is trying to abandon them.

That’s why it should come as no surprise to “The Marsh King’s Daughter” viewers when it’s revealed that Jacob kidnapped Beth (whose last name is Ericson) about 12 years earlier and forced her to get pregnant. Helena was the result of this forced pregnancy. This secret isn’t revealed to Helena until something drastic happens.

By the end of the first third of the movie, Beth makes a daring escape with Helena, while Jacob murders an innocent ATV driver (played by Joshua Peace) during this escape. Jacob is captured, convicted, and sentenced to several years in prison. The media and law enforcement have given Jacob the nickname The Marsh King. None of this is spoiler information, since it’s already revealed in the trailer for “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” which gives away about 80% of the movie’s plot.

The middle and last sections “The Marsh King’s Daughter” take place in 2022. Helena (played by Daisy Ridley) is now a 30-year-old married mother, with the married surname Pelletier. Helena works in accounting at a local college. Beth is now deceased. It’s mentioned at one point in the movie that it took years for Helena and Beth to somewhat mend their relationship before Beth died.

Helena is deeply ashamed of who her father is, so she changed her own identity years ago. She has not told her businessman husband Stephen Pelletier (played by Garrett Hedlund) about her father and his sordid crimes. Instead, Helena has told Stephen that her father is dead. Helena and Stephen have one child together: an intuitive and curious daughter named Marigold (played by Joey Carson), who’s about 8 or 9 years old.

Helena’s world comes crashing down when Jacob escapes from being transported in a prison van and kills a few more people in the process. Jacob is determined to track down Helena, because in his warped mind, he thinks that he, Helena, and Marigold should live as a happy family in the marsh area where Helena spent much of her childhood.

Gil Birmingham has a thankless supporting role as an investigating police officer named Clark Bekkum, who was in love with Helena’s mother Beth. Clark and Beth never married, but Clark became like a stepfather figure to Helena when she was younger and when Jacob was in prison. Clark still wants to have that type of stepfather figure role in Helena’s life when Clark and Helena reconnect after not seeing each other for years. What happens to Clark in the movie is exactly what you think happens to Clark.

Mendolsohn has made a career out of playing movie villains, and he does more of the same posturing and sneering as “The Marsh King” serial killer Jacob in this tepid and uninspired drama. Ridley fails to convince during an abrupt transition when Helena goes from being a meek and introverted wife/mother to a badass action hero who thinks she doesn’t need law enforcement’s help in dealing with her dangerous father. There is so little suspense in how this story ends, “The Marsh King’s Daughter” simply exists as mindless mush.

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions released “The Marsh King’s Daughter” in U.S. cinemas on November 3, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on November 21, 2023.

Review: ‘Bad Axe,’ starring Jaclyn Siev, Chun Siev, Rachel Siev, David Siev, Raquel Siev, Michelle Siev and Michael Meinhold

April 1, 2023

by Carla Hay

Jaclyn Siev (pictured at left) in “Bad Axe” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Bad Axe”

Directed by David Siev

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2020, in Bad Axe, Michigan, the documentary film “Bad Axe” features a group of Asian and white people (with a few African Americans) discussing the Siev family, a Cambodian-Mexican American clan that owns the Bad Axe casual restaurant Rachel’s.

Culture Clash: The family experiences several challenges during the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, including COVID-19 restrictions, financial problems, political conflicts and bigotry toward non-white immigrants.

Culture Audience: “Bad Axe” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stories about immigrant families and restaurant survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chun Siev in “Bad Axe” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Bad Axe” is more than just a documentary about a family-owned restaurant trying to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also an emotionally stirring and heartfelt story about immigration, dealing with bigotry, and the significance of family legacies. “Bad Axe” director David Siev says in the film that this documentary is also a “love letter” to his hometown of Bad Axe, Michigan, where this documentary was filmed. However, the story of his family resonates more in this film than a story about a city, because there aren’t many people outside of the family who are interviewed for this documentary.

“Bad Axe” had its world premiere at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, where the movie won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature, as well as special jury recognition for Intimacy in Storytelling. “Bad Axe” also won the 2022 Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best First Documentary Feature. “Bad Axe” is an admirable feature-film directorial debut from Siev, who manages to weave together two different storylines (the COVID-19 storyline and the immigrant storyline) in a meaningful way. The merging of these two storylines isn’t always seamless (some of the film editing needed improving), but it’s never awkward or confusing. The “Bad Axe” documentary was filmed in the first several months of the pandemic, beginning when lockdowns in the U.S. started in March 2020. A few epilogue scenes were filmed in 2021.

The documentary begins David’s sister Jaclyn Siev reading an angry, anonymous letter from a customer of Rachel’s, the Bad Axe casual restaurant owned by David’s parents Chun Siev and Rachel Siev. Rachel’s is a restaurant that serves American and Asian food and can seat about 50 to 75 people indoors. Chun is a Cambodia immigrant who has been living in Michigan since the mid-1970s, when he, his siblings and their single mother relocated to the United States. Rachel is a Mexican American who met Chun through a Taekwondo class that she took where Chun was the instructor.

According to the 2020 U.S. census, Bad Axe is a city with a population of a little more than 3,000 people, and 95% are white. Most residents of Bad Axe have household incomes that would classify them as working-class or poor. Located in Michigan’s Huron County, Bad Axe is a city whose population has been steadily declining since 1990, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Bad Axe was also a conflicted city in 2020, when it came to how the government should have handled certain COVID-19 policies, such as whether or not people should be required to wear masks, and which businesses needed to shut down during the quarantining lockdown period of the pandemic. Michigan was one of the U.S. states where COVID-19 policies sparked the most widespread protests and debates, often divided along political lines.

Supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump tended to be the most resistant to government safety policies for the pandemic. People who were against these policies argued that it violated their personal freedom of choice. All of these sociopolitical factors affected countless people, especially during the first two years of the pandemic. “Bad Axe” takes a very up-close and personal look at how it all affected this family’s small restaurant business.

The angry customer letter that Jaclyn reads on camera says, in part: “You are right that many of your customers are Trump supporters, but Bad Axe isn’t changing from traditional American values. My family and others will be changing our restaurant routine, and Rachel’s is no longer a choice. … You can return to Cambodia for opportunity.” The documentary circles back to this letter-reading scene after it shows the reason why this letter was sent in the first place.

As most people already know, the restaurant industry was among the hardest-hit during the lockdown period of the pandemic. Even though restaurants were considered essential businesses that could stay open during the lockdowns, most U.S. states and cities banned indoor sit-down meals at restaurants for several months. (The lifting of this ban depended on the local or state government that issued these regulations.) Most restaurants that stayed open durng these restrictions had to rely on take-out and delivery orders, as well as provide outdoor seating areas, if the restaurants were fortunate enough to have space for outdoor seating.

In “Bad Axe,” David (who lives in New York City) is shown coming back to Bad Axe during the pandemic lockdowns to spend time with his family. Jaclyn (the eldest child in the family) also took time off from her regular life to help out as much as she can in the restaurant. It’s mentioned that Jaclyn and her husband Michael “Mike” Meinhold live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and their corporate day jobs allowed them to work from home during the pandemic lockdowns. They used this more flexible work schedule to go to Bad Axe and assist in operating the restaurant.

Meinhold says, “Bad Axe is a place where, if you grew up here, you really can’t wait to get out. It doesn’t have a whole lot of things to offer.” He adds, as if attempting not to appear too negative about Bad Axe: “It’s a nice place to raise a family.”

Also featured in the documentary are David and Rachel’s younger sisters Raquel Siev and Michelle Siev, who help out in the restaurant too. At the time the pandemic lockdowns happened, Raquel was about to graduate from the University of Michigan and wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea of continuing to work at the restaurant after graduation. Michelle seems a little more committed to her restaurant duties, but she also can’t say for sure that she will take over the restaurant when her parents retire.

Family friend/restaurant manager Skyler Janssen is also seen being among the crucial staff who helped keep the restaurant open for business. She is a friendly and loyal employee who is treated almost like a member of the family. Janssen admits later in the documentary that if it weren’t for being employed at the restaurant, she probably wouldn’t have taken the time to get to know the Siev family, whose race and family history are different from hers.

These cultural differences in Bad Axe cause friction in the community when outspoken Jaclyn and mild-mannered Raquel get involved in the Black Lives Matter protests in Bad Axe and nearby cities, after the horrific murder of Goerge Floyd. Raquel’s boyfriend Austin Turmell also gets involved in the protests, and he has a personal reason for advocating for better race relations: He’s an African American whose adoptive parents Denise Turmell and Wayne Turmell are white. All of these family members are featured in the documentary.

During one of these protests, members of extreme white supremacy groups line up with guns as a way to intimidate the peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. Things get heated as some of the protesters and the white supremacists yell insults at each other. Jaclyn is one of the people who gets caught up in these verbal conflicts.

People are filming this public gathering, which also makes the local news. And even though Jaclyn is wearing a face mask covering the lower part of her face, people in the community recognize her when videos of her at the protest are seen in mass media. The restaurant gets a backlash for these civil rights activities, and the backlash grows when people find out that David has started a crowdfunding campaign for the documentary.

But the conflicts that the Siev family faces aren’t just from external sources. The family had internal conflicts too. It would be easy to assume that a family would be united to help save the family’s restaurant under these circumstances. However, that was not the case with the Siev family.

“Bad Axe” shows that Jaclyn, who has a take-charge personality, often argued with her parents to be quarantined at home, out of concerns that they might get infected by COVID-19, due the parents being in the high-risk group of people over the age of 60. Chun and Rachel eventually agree to the quarantine. And there comes a point where Chun gets so discouraged by the sharp decline in business, he contemplates closing the restaurant permanently. It’s a decision that Jaclyn vehemently opposes.

There are some tearful arguments among family members, with Jaclyn openly saying that she feels the most pressure (as the eldest child) to keep the family business going. Part of her determination to keep the restaurant in business comes from the heartbreak that she and other family members experienced when Chun had a donut shop that failed years ago when his children were underage. Jaclyn tells anyone who’ll listen that she doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Rachel’s. In the documentary, she considers quitting her day job and taking over the restaurant full-time.

Chun says in the documentary that Jaclyn reminds him a lot of his mother. Jaclyn comments on Chun’s mother: “She’s the one who taught me what it means to sacrifice for your family. I just always grew up thinking, ‘If she could survive a genocide and come to this country, the least I can do is help my family run a business.”

Quarantining at home during the pandemic obviously caused Chun to reflect on his life. And that’s where the documentary’s second storyline comes in: Chun talks about his past in Cambodia (he experienced some horrific things) and what it was like to be a refugee immigrant in the United States. The American Dream is a constant theme in “Bad Axe.” And during the pandemic, that dream and so many others were destroyed for many people, often in unexpected ways.

Many directors who make documentaries about their families tend to make themselves (the directors) the stars of these documentaries. David doesn’t follow that usual stereotype. He is seen in some of the footage, and he’s also heard asking some of the interview questions. But he isn’t at the center of the documentary’s story.

Without question, Jaclyn and Chun are the stars of the “Bad Axe” documentary. Their disagreements have a lot to do with something that is obvious to viewers, but it takes a while for Jaclyn and Chun to figure out: This father and daughter, both stubborn and opinionated, have their biggest clashes with each other because their personalities are so much alike.

“Bad Axe” is a story of survival, not just financial but also emotional, during a deadly pandemic. It’s a story about a multiracial family learning more about how they can live in a mostly white community during a time of high racial tension. And most important of all: It’s a story about a family finding new ways to appreciate each other when times are tough and uncertain.

IFC Films released “Bad Axe” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 18, 2022.

Review: ‘How to Fix a Primary,’ starring Abdul El-Sayed

October 31, 2020

by Carla Hay

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Abdul El-Sayed in “How to Fix a Primary” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“How to Fix a Primary”

Directed by Brittany Huckabee 

Culture Representation: The documentary “How to Fix a Primary,” which is about Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 campaign to become governor of Michigan, features a racially diverse group of people (white people, African Americans, Asians and Latinos), who are mostly political progressives, discussing the campaign.

Culture Clash: El-Sayed, who is a progressive Democrat, contends that he faced an uphill battle against well-funded establishment factions of the Democratic Party that unfairly squeeze out upstart “outsider” Democratic candidates.

Culture Audience: “How to Fix a Primary” will primarily appeal to people who like watching political documentaries about progressive liberals or “underdog” political candidates.

Abdul El-Sayed in “How to Fix a Primary” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

It’s really no secret that campaign funds and political connections play major roles in the likelihood that a political candidate can get elected. But is the system rigged for “establishment” candidates to get unfair advantages over “outsider” candidates, even those who are from the same political party? In the case of medical doctor Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat who lost the 2018 primary election to become Michigan’s governor, the answer is a resounding “yes,” according to the documentary “How to Fix a Primary.”

Directed by Brittany Huckabee, “How to Fix a Primary” is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at El-Sayed’s ill-fated campaign, although at times the movie looks more like an electronic press kit to promote El-Sayed than an objective documentary that takes an unflinching look at any of his flaws. People don’t have to be a Democrat or a progressive liberal to enjoy watching this documentary. However, people who watch “How to Fix a Primary” are more likely to enjoy it if they’re inclined to root for “outsider” political candidates who take bold risks to fight for what they believe, even if the odds and many naysayers/doubters are stacked against these “outsider” candidates.

El-Sayed (who is known as a CNN commentator) is an Egyptian American who is also Muslim. He is very proud of and unapologetic about who he is, but he is also well-aware that some voters automatically won’t support him because of his ethnicity and religion. However, his campaign was geared largely to open-minded progressives who wanted something different from the “status quo” in a Michigan governor.

Born in Detroit in 1984, El-Sayed is a Rhodes Scholar with degrees from the University of Michigan, Oxford University and Columbia University. He served as executive director of the Detroit Health Department, as well as Health Officer for the city of Detroit, from 2015 to 2017. He also used to be an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University. El-Sayed married his wife Sarah Jukaku while they were in college in 2006 (she is shown as a supportive spouse in a few scenes in the documentary), and their first child (a daughter named Emmalee) was born during his 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign.

Despite his background as a privileged professional, El-Sayed’s overall campaign message was that he was a champion for “everyday people,” and he refused to take campaign money from corporate donors. His candidate platform was largely about reforming Michigan’s government policies to be more uplifting and beneficial to the working-class and poor and to fund his proposed programs mainly by increasing taxes on the wealthy.

Health care, criminal-justice reforms, infrastructure and Michigan’s polluted water crisis were among the top priorities on his agenda. (He is a big proponent of Medicare for All.) If El-Sayed had won the general election, he would have been the first Muslim to become a state governor in the United States. In the movie, he’s shown to be a political candidate who is passionate, articulate and approachable. However, compared to his main Democratic opponents, the documentary portrays him as an under-funded “doomed” candidate because he wasn’t willing to go to certain lengths in order to win.

Within the Democratic Party, he faced stiff competition from two very different middle-aged candidates. Gretchen Whitmer, who won the 2018 primary election and general election to become Michigan’s governor, was considered the “establishment” candidate who got millions in campaign money from corporate donors. She served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 2001 to 2006, and in the Michigan Senate from 2006 to 2015. Shri Thanedar, an Indian immigrant and self-made millionaire entrepreneur, spent his own money on his political campaign. Thanedar used his experience in business and his “political outsider” status as reasons to vote for him because, just like El-Sayed, he promised to shake up Michigan’s government with progressive changes.

Because “How to Fix a Primary” is obviously sympathetic to El-Sayed and his campaign, the documentary takes a very scathing critical look at Whitmer and Thanedar. Whitmer is portrayed as a political hack, a corporate sell-out and someone who relied too heavily on her “Fix the Damn Roads” catchphrase for her campaign. El-Sayed says in the documentary that Michigan’s water crisis should’ve been Whitmer’s bigger priority than fixing roads. Thanedar is portrayed as a power-hungry opportunist, with a history of shady business practices, who wanted to buy his way into becoming Michigan’s governor. El-Sayed’s campaign also accuses Thanedar of not being a true Democrat, based on reports that he chose to run as a Democrat instead of as a Republican because Thanedar thought he would have a better chance of winning as a Democrat.

However valid those criticisms might or might not be, the movie’s biggest shortcoming is that the filmmakers place almost no scrutiny on El-Sayed, who’s portrayed as morally righteous and as close to “perfect” as a politician can be. The reality is that no politician is as “perfect” as this documentary wants El-Sayed to look. In the documentary, the filmmakers do not ask him to reflect on any past personal or professional mistakes and what he learned from them. All of the televised debate footage in the documentary is carefully edited so that only El-Sayed’s best soundbites are used.

It seems like the filmmakers were afraid to expose anything that would make El-Sayed look less than perfect. But by conveniently erasing or not mentioning anything in the film that makes El-Sayed look like a human being who makes mistakes like everyone else does, it actually undermines his calculated efforts to appear to be a “regular guy” fighting for Michigan communities who are underrepresented and often-overlooked. El-Sayed mentions in the documentary that he gets hate mail and he had to hire a security staffer, but that’s standard for anyone running for a high-profile public office.

The people on El-Sayed’s campaign team who get the most screen time are also portrayed as social justice warriors who think they’re immune to corruption and are ready to accuse their opponents of playing dirty. (Almost all of his campaign workers are under the age of 40.) The top-level people on El-Sayed’s team who are featured in the documentary are campaign manager Max Glass, deputy campaign manager Claire Sandberg, policy director Rhiana Gunn-Wright and communications director Adam Joseph.

There’s only one scene in the documentary where El-Sayed is personally confronted by a critic. After a campaign appearance, while he is surrounded by people recording him with their phones, an extreme right-wing YouTube personality named Laura Loomer asks El-Sayed how he can claim to be a devout Muslim and also be an ally to the LGBTQ community, since the Muslim religion teaches that homosexuality is morally wrong. El-Sayed is tactfully gracious in his response: “What’s beautiful about this country is that I choose my own faith, and you choose yours or none at all.”

Loomer tries to press the issue, but El-Sayed eventually cuts off her line of questioning and ends up leaving. As he departs in the hallway, he says to his security personnel about being ambushed by Loomer: “You guys have got to jump on that way faster.” Loomer, who is known for expressing conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric, eventually became a political candidate herself: In the 2020 elections, she was the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Florida’s 21st congressional district, where Donald Trump lives.

If you were to believe everything presented in this documentary, El-Sayed was the only Democratic candidate who had a “clean” campaign in this Michigan gubernatorial election. Meanwhile, there’s a reason why so many voters mistrust all politicians: There’s a widespread belief that all politicians eventually do secret deals that benefit the politicians, not the people they’re supposed to serve.

But according to Sandberg, progressive Democrats are the most honest factions of the Democratic Party, compared to moderate Democrats who are part of the establishment. In the documentary, she compares the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to feuding crime families: “The best analogy that I can think of for the situation progressives are in to compete in these types of elections is that there’s a war going on between two different crime families. And progressives are legitimate business operators trying to compete against these two warring crime families.”

Sandberg adds of establishment politicians, “They control the process. They control the media. They control the money. And it’s incredibly difficult to take them on.” Later in the documentary, in one of the movie’s most compelling scenes, Sandberg attends a Michigan board of elections hearing where she presents her campaign team’s case that Thanedar should be removed from the ballot because he allegedly collected thousands of fraudulent signatures. El-Sayed’s team wanted the board of elections to investigate and find that Thanedar did not have the minimum 15,000 legitimate voter signatures required to be a candidate for Michigan governor.

Leading up to this crucial hearing, the documentary showed the painstaking work that El-Sayed’s campaign workers put into comparing thousands of signatures against voter registrations, to see if the signatures matched what was on file, and to find any signatures that could be disqualified. For example, voters could not sign election petitions for more than one gubernatorial candidate. Signatures could also be disqualified if they belonged to people who weren’t registered voters at the time they signed.

The board’s decision is what El-Sayed’s team did not expect. But in hindsight, El-Sayed’s campaign staffers say in the documentary that the decision was rigged from the beginning. Sandberg places most of the blame on board of elections member Julie Matuzak, a Whitmer supporter who was an American Federation of Teachers lobbyist and someone whom Sandberg says was also running a “dark money” group that was funneling donations into Whitmer’s campaign. It’s a conflict of interest that would be one of the reasons why Whitmer’s fundraising for this campaign came under legal scrutiny in 2019.

The documentary also shows how El-Sayed’s opponents tried to discredit his eligibility by claiming he hadn’t lived in Michigan long enough to be qualified to run for governor of Michigan. Under Michigan law, a candidate for governor must be a Michigan resident who lived in Michigan for the four consecutive years before the election year. El-Sayed lived and voted in New York City in 2012, but he had been living in Michigan for at least four years when he declared his gubernatorial candidacy in 2017. 

However, this question over his eligibility (which was eventually resolved in his favor by a Michigan court) and the media attention about this issue ended up damaging El-Sayed’s campaign, according to Glass, who previously worked on campaigns for Democratic politicians Tulsi Gabbard and Seth Moulton. Gunn-Wright comes right out and says that racism was at the root of the accusation against El-Sayed. Even though the accusation against El-Sayed was proven to be false, it decreased voter confidence in El-Sayed and hurt his fundraising. At one point in the documentary, Glass dejectedly tells campaign workers in a meeting that they only have $474,000 in campaign funds, while Whitmer is estimated to have raised $4.5 million for her campaign.

Money can make or break a campaign, but that’s true for politicians of any political leaning, not just progressive Democrats. And plenty of white politicians have been accused of carpetbagging or not being eligible for a campaign, based on previous residences, so it’s not an accusation that’s unique to non-white candidates. El-Sayed and Glass both comment that when El-Sayed raised $1 million in donations earlier in the campaign, that’s when El-Sayed’s political opponents (Democrats and Republicans) began to see him as a threat, and accusations soon followed that El-Sayed was not an eligible candidate based on his residential history. In other words, money played more of a role than racial identity in El-Sayed being perceived as a threat and targeted for elimination by the competition.

Although the documentary would like to portray Whitmer and Thanedar as the villains in this campaign, it’s clear that high-profile progressives in the Democratic Party weren’t exactly rushing to align themselves with El-Sayed in this campaign. El-Sayed’s campaign team tried in vain for about a year to get the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, who held off on endorsing El-Sayed until just a few days before the primary election day. El-Sayed’s campaign manager Glass comments in the film that although Sanders’ endorsement was appreciated, that public vote of confidence from Sanders was too late. 

One exception to El-Sayed’s relative lack of support from high-profile progressive Democrats was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who was an early political ally of El-Sayed’s, before she became a star in the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez and El-Sayed share a kinship because they were in similar situations in the 2018 elections: As young people of color running for political office for the first time, they branded themselves as progressive “outsiders” who want to shake up the establishment. An early scene in “How to Fix a Primary” shows El-Sayed giving Ocasio-Cortez a friendly tour of Detroit. (The Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House” gives further insight into why Ocasio-Cortez won her 2018 election.)

Despite the flaw of being heavily biased in portraying El-Sayed in the best possible light, “How to Fix a Primary” does an admirable job of putting his campaign in a larger context of how much can be bought and sold in an election in order for a candidate to win. It’s not a new issue, nor will this documentary solve the problem. Political corruption and voter mistrust will continue to affect the outcome of elections. But at least the film takes a unique look at the journey that one political candidate took to try to push back against what he sees as a rigged system.

Gravitas Ventures released “How to Fix a Primary” on digital, VOD, Blu-ray and DVD on October 20, 2020.

Review: ‘Once Upon a River,’ starring Kenadi DelaCerna, John Ashton, Tatanka Means, Ajuawak Kapashesit, Sam Straley, Coburn Goss, Lindsay Pulsipher and Kenn E. Head

October 5, 2020

by Carla Hay

Kenadi DelaCerna in “Once Upon a River” (Photo by Daniel Klutznick/Film Movement)

“Once Upon a River”

Directed by Haroula Rose

Culture Representation: Taking place in rural Michigan in 1977, the dramatic film “Once Upon a River” features a cast of Native Americans and white people (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A 15-year-old girl experiences trauma and tragedies before, during and after her quest to find her mother, who abandoned her family the year before.

Culture Audience: “Once Upon a River” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in coming-of-age stories that lay it on thick with life’s harsh realities.

Kenadi DelaCerna and Tatanka Means in “Once Upon a River” (Photo by Daniel Klutznick/Film Movement)

There will be a point when anyone watching the dramatic film “Once Upon a River” will probably think, “How much more tragedy can one person take? What else can go wrong?” This emotionally moving film tells the story of a 15-year-old Native American girl in Michigan who goes through a lot of trauma in a relatively short period of time and who goes on a quest to find the mother who abandoned her. Kenadi DelaCerna makes a striking feature-film debut as the story’s beleaguered teenage protagonist who finds out how resilient she can be when so many bad things keep happening to her.

“Once Upon a River,” written and directed by Haroula Rose, is adapted from the novel of the same name by Bonnie Jo Campbell. The movie is also Rose’s feature-film debut, and it’s an uncompromising, unrelenting look at issues that go deep when it comes to family problems, feeling isolated, and reaching out to find an emotional connection with someone who cares. The movie is intermittently narrated by the character at the center of the story: Margo Crane, who is 15 when this story takes place in 1977, but the narration is of an older Margo looking back on this period of time in her life.

Margo at age 15 lives with her divorced father Bernard Crane (played by Tatanka Means) in the fictional rural town of Murrayville, Michigan. They are both very emotionally wounded by the fact that Bernard’s wife Luanne (Margo’s mother) abruptly left the year before. As Margo explains in the narration, Luanne (played by Lindsay Pulsipher) only left a note saying that she needed to “go find herself” as the reason why she was abandoning them.

Margo also says that she and her father don’t really talk about Luanne leaving, but Margo knows that her father stopped drinking alcohol the day that Margo’s mother left. In Margo and Bernard’s day-to-day existence that’s shown in the movie, Margo and her father have introverted personalities, but she shows occasional signs of teenage rebellion and wanting to be more independent. Bernard can be protective and he will scold Margaret if she goes out in the woods by herself and doesn’t tell him where she is.

Bernard and Margo live next door to Bernard’s white half-brother Cal Murray (played by Coburn Goss), but Cal has a very different lifestyle than Margo and Bernard. As Margo describes it, Cal pretty much runs the town because the Murray family owns a business (which is not named in the movie) that employs many of the town’s residents. Bernard’s job is not specifically mentioned, but it’s implied that he works for the same company in a low-paying, blue-collar position.

Cal has inherited the business from his late father, who was the father of Bernard. It’s implied but never said outright that Cal’s white father was never married to Bernard’s Native American mother (which would explain why Bernard has a different last name), so Bernard and Margo are treated as the “bastard” members of the family. However, when Bernard and Cal’s father was alive, he gave Margo a canoe called The River Rose.

Bernard and Margo live in a cramped and cluttered small home, while Cal and Cal’s wife and children live in a much larger home and can afford to have regular parties at their house. Cal doesn’t see Bernard and Rose as a threat to take over the business, which is why he’s cordial to them. Cal even invites Margo over for hunting target practice with him and Cal’s two teenage sons: hothead Billy (played by Sam Straley) and mild-mannered Junior (played by Arie Thompson).

Cal is impressed with how good Margo is at target practice (she’s a better shooter than Billy and Junior), so he invites Margo to go hunting with them when hunting season starts. Billy, the younger brother, is very jealous that Margo is getting this attention and praise from Cal. Billy grumbles that Margo’s on-target shooting is “beginner’s luck,” and he gets up in her face and tries to be intimidating when he sees that his father might include Margo in family activities that Billy think should be only for Cal’s children.

Margo is never seen in school, and she apparently has no friends. Her relationship with her father is close, but not close enough where they can openly talk about their feelings with each other about how Luann’s abandonment has affected them. And because the Murray family has higher social status in the community than Margo and Bernard, it’s easy to see why Margo would be flattered and willing to go along with whatever Cal wants.

At one of the house parties at Cal’s home, it soon becomes apparent why Cal was paying special attention to Margo. He offers her a drink from his flask of alcohol, and he compliments her by telling her she looks pretty. Cal then tells Margo that he wants to show how to skin a deer, which is a skill he says she’ll need if they go hunting. He takes her inside a shed in the back of the family home. And then, Cal starts kissing Margo, one thing leads to another, and they have sex. Cal asks Margo if she’s a virgin, and she says yes.

One of the female party guests walks near the shed and sees what’s happening. Margo notices that someone has caught them in the act, and Margo puts a stop to what she and Cal were doing. But within a very short period of time (less than two minutes), an angry Bernard comes storming over and gets in a fist fight with Cal, while yelling at Cal to get away from Margo. Word must’ve traveled very fast.

By this time, people at the party have gathered around to witness the fight, including Cal’s wife Joanna (played by Josephine Decker), who has heard that something wrong has happened between Cal and Margo. Cal looks desperately at his wife and immediately says about Margo, “That little slut lured me in there, but nothing happened.” Joanna takes her husband’s side and orders Bernard and Margo to stay away from her family.

Although Margo is not to blame for Cal’s act of incest and statutory rape, she is the one who is shamed for it by the Murray family. When Billy and his friends see her around town, Billy makes derogatory comments about her. And adding to Margo’s humiliation, her father is now on the outs with the Murray family, which could affect him economically in a town run by the Murrays.

Feelings of embarrassment and anger eventually build up to a point where another confrontation happens that changes Margo’s life for the worse. Without giving away too many details, it’s enough to say that she runs away from home and goes on a journey to find her estranged mother. Margo travels by her canoe on the Stark River, with a rifle for protection and hunting, but she gets some help along the way from various people who give her rides by car.

The first person she turns to for help is a man in his late 30s or early 40s named Billy (played by Dominic Bogart), who has been buying the hunted venison that Margo was selling for extra money before she ran away from home. Billy lives with his brother Paul (played by Evan Linder), who is a recovering meth addict. Although Billy has a mild flirtation with Margo and thinks she’s attractive, he doesn’t cross the line by taking advantage of her. Margo’s real named is Margaret, and Billy affectionately calls her Maggie.

While skinning a hunted rabbit in a park, Margo meets a man in his 20s named Will (Ajuawak Kapashesit), who says he’s from the Cherokee tribe and is originally from Oklahoma. He is traveling because he’s going to start a new job teaching a class at an unnamed school. Margo and Will have an almost instant connection and romantic sparks fly between them.

A grouchy old man named Smoke (played by John Ashton) has the biggest impact on Margo, in ways that neither of them expected. Smoke, who used to be a musician, lives alone and has no children. Smoke got his nickname because he’s a heavy smoker.

Margo convinces him to let her temporarily stay in a camper on his property in exchange for her cooking, cleaning, and hunting for their food. She tells Smoke that she’d like to live there until she can get enough money to travel north. Smoke’s closest friend is nicknamed Fishbone (played by Kenn E. Head), a former bandmate who stops by to visit and sells cigarettes to Smoke. Fishbone is not as curmudgeonly as Smoke, but he has varying degrees of reactions in how involved he wants to get in Margo’s problems.

And she definitely has problems that happen before and after she runs away from home. There are some close calls where it looks like she could be caught and put in the custody of child protective services. And in the midst of being homeless for a good deal of the story, Margo also has to be her own private detective to try to find her mother. It’s not an easy task, since her mother moves around a lot, and this is 1977, before Internet searches were possible. And then, more tragedy strikes.

Despite all the problems that pile on Margo, “Once Upon a River” never reduces her to a pitiful stereotype. She experiences some subtle and not-so-subtle racism, but her journey is mainly dangerous and devastating because she’s an underage girl on her own for most of the story. Margo has to grow up fast, but there many moments that remind viewers that she’s still a child who needs love, guidance and role models she can trust.

A great deal of “Once Upon a River” is about family (either biological or chosen) and looking for a place to belong. Writer/director Rose keeps the tone of the movie as realistic as possible, but some viewers might wonder why Margo never has any female allies in this story while she’s looking for her mother. Is it just an unexplained coincidence or is it because has Margo’s abandonment issues with her mother and therefore doesn’t seem to trust other females? We’ll never know.

What is very apparent though is that DelaCerna gives an absolutely riveting performance that skillfully expresses all the emotions and insecurities of a girl who’s on the cusp of womanhood and dealing with some very difficult issues. Thanks to the nuanced direction of Rose and the excellent cinematography of Charlotte Hornsby, “Once Upon a River” has an impactful way of contrasting Margo’s gritty homeless life with the beauty of the woods and river where she hides. It’s an apt metaphor for someone who’s trying to run away from her problems but is on a journey of finding herself and discovering what kind of person she’s capable of being.

Film Movement released “Once Upon a River” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on October 2, 2020.

Review: ‘The Wretched,’ starring John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Azie Tesfai, Zarah Mahler, Kevin Bigley and Jamison Jones

May 1, 2020

by Carla Hay

John-Paul Howard in “The Wretched” (Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight)

“The Wretched”

Directed by Brett Pierce and Drew Pierce

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city in Michigan, the horror flick “The Wretched” has a predominantly white cast (with some African American and Asian representation) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A troubled teen who goes to live with his divorced father for the summer thinks there’s something sinister going on at the house next door, but no one believes him.

Culture Audience: “The Wretched” will appeal primarily to horror fans who like bloody gore and stories about evil spirits, but the movie does little to dispel the negative stereotype that horror movies have terribly written screenplays.

Madelyn Stunenkel in “The Wretched” (Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight)

“The Wretched” had the potential to be a critically acclaimed classic in a sea of low-budget, predictable horror movies. Unfortunately, “The Wretched” (written and directed by brothers Brett Pierce and Drew Pierce) devolves into an incoherent mess in the last 20 minutes of the film, thereby wasting the potential that it had in the beginning of the story. “The Wretched” has some impressively scary imagery, given the film’s low budget, but it’s not enough to overcome the movie’s laughably bad ending.

In the production notes for “The Wretched,” the 1985 children’s adventure movie “The Goonies” and Roald Dahl’s 1983 dark fantasy novel “The Witches” are cited as influences on “The Wretched.” The Pierce Brothers also say in the production notes that the evil spirt in the movie (called The Wretch) was inspired by witchy folklore such as Black Annis (from England) and the Boo Hag (from the Appalachian Mountains). Being derivative isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a movie to be if the “inspired by” aspects of the film are elevated by good direction, acting, and screenwriting. “The Wretched” falls short with its screenwriting.

The movie begins “35 years ago,” as it says on screen, where a teenage girl wearing a Sony Walkman goes to a house in a quiet suburban neighborhood in an unnamed Michigan city. (The movie was actually filmed on location in Northport, Michigan.) Based on what’s seen in this brief scene, she appears to be a babysitter. The house is silent and apparently empty, but the movie’s foreboding musical score by Devin Burrows signals that something terrible is about to happen.

A family photo in the house shows that a man and a woman live there with their pre-teen daughter, who looks to be about 7 or 8 years old. But there’s something odd about the photo: There’s an “x” mark scratched on the man’s face. The unnamed teen makes her way to the house’s cellar, where she encounters something bloody and terrifying: The mother, who now looks like a grotesque witch-like creature, is hunched over the daughter and chewing away at the child’s neck to the point where the daughter is almost de-capitated. The teenager screams and tries to leave, only to see that the father is at the top of the cellar stairs, as he slams the door and locks the teenager inside.

The movie then fast forwards to “five days ago,” when the protagonist of the story is introduced. His name is Ben Shaw (played by John-Michael Howard), a 17-year-old who has arrived by bus to live in the area with his divorced dad, Liam Shaw (played by Jamison Jones), for the summer. It’s later revealed in the story that Ben is a teen with a troubled past, and he’s been sent by his mother to temporarily live with his father, in the hopes that it will help Ben straighten out his life.  Ben has a cast on his left arm, and it has something to do with some trouble he got into when he was living with his mother, who’s not seen in the movie but can be heard having phone conversations with Ben.

As soon as Ben arrives at this father’s modest house, it’s obvious that Liam hasn’t spent much time raising Ben, because Ben gives him a kid’s bicycle as a gift. Ben says that he has his driver’s license and that his mother is planning to buy him a car. A sheepish Liam apologizes and admits that he didn’t realize how much Ben had grown up since the last time they saw each other.

Liam works as a manager of a local marina called Porter Bay, where he’s gotten Ben a part-time job as a deckhand who can also give sailing lessons to kids. They live in a seaside city that has a lot of vacation homes owned by the type of people who also have their own boats docked at the marina. Ben soon encounters a privileged group of teen vacationers, led by an arrogant bully named Gage (played by Richard Ellis), who immediately tries to make Ben feel inferior by bossing him around.

During his first day on the job, Ben also meets a friendly co-worker named Mallory (played by Piper Curda), who’s around the same age as Ben is. She teases Ben about the nepotism that got him the job, because he says under other circumstances, someone with an arm cast wouldn’t be able to get such a physically demanding job at the marina. Ben and Mallory have the kind of slightly flirtatious banter that indicates that they could end up dating each other. Mallory has a younger sister named Lily (played by Ja’layah Washington), who’s about 9 or 10 years old and who hangs out a lot at the marina when Mallory is there.

One day while on the job, Ben sees his father Liam romantically kissing a woman near one of the docked boats. It’s the first time that Ben is aware that his father has a girlfriend. Later, when he mentions to Liam that he saw him with this woman he doesn’t know about, Liam tells Ben that her name is Sara (played by Azie Tesfai), and she also works at the marina. Ben said that he would like to meet her. Liam (looking happy and relieved that Ben is open to meeting Sara) immediately agrees and says that Sara can come to the house for dinner that night.

Meanwhile, Liam’s next-door neighbors get their own spotlight in the story. They are tattooed mother Abbie (played by Zarah Mahler), her husband Ty (played by Kevin Bigley) and their two sons—a newborn baby and a pre-teen named Dillon (played by Blane Crockarell), who looks to be about 7 or 8 years old. Abbie and Ty are the type of parents who go to Burning Man (it’s mentioned in the movie) and go to a lot of rock concerts, where they sometimes also bring Dillon.

While Abbie and Dillon are hiking together in the woods nearby, Abbie tries to deny that they’ve gotten lost. While Dillon’s mother briefly walks out of his sight range, Dillon sees a strange-looking tree with a large opening in its trunk. The opening appears to lead underground. All of sudden, he hears his mother’s voice coming from the tree and telling him to walk down into the opening.

As Dillon hesitantly approaches the tree, the voice becomes more impatient and insists that Dillon go through the opening. But then, his mother shows up behind Dillon, and he realizes that it wasn’t his mother calling him from the tree after all. When he glances back, Dillon sees that the tree has disappeared.

Meanwhile, Ben has his own strange encounters. In his first night at his father’s house, he notices what looks like a strange creature creature crawling around the next door neighbors’ front yard, near the cellar.  Ben goes there with a flashlight to investigate and sees a raccoon. But he isn’t entirely convinced that what he saw was a small animal. Just as he’s about to snoop further, Ty catches him in the front yard and asks Ben to leave.

The next day, Ben sees Dillon playing by himself in the front yard, and he strikes up a conversation with the boy. Dillon appears to be homeschooled, so he’s eager to have a “older brother” type to hang out with on occasion. Ben and Dillon end up forming a friendly, almost brotherly bond, but Ben warns Dillon to stay away from the cellar in Dillon’s house. Ben has been spying on the house and is convinced that the epicenter of the house’s evil is in the cellar.

A densely wooded area is within walking distance of both houses, so Ben is aware that whatever he saw could have come from the woods. While Ben is suspicious that something might be lurking near the houses at night, he begins to spy (using binoculars) on the neighbors’ house at night. Abbie and Ty leave their curtains open during some amorous moments, so Ben essentially becomes an unexpected Peeping Tom.

It isn’t long before something horrible and deadly happens that sets off a chain of events where Ben discovers that an evil witch spirit is on the loose. There’s an eerie symbol of the letter “A” upside-down that’s part of the mystery. And when the demonic spirit is nearby, flowers start to immediately wilt and die. Through an Internet search, Ben finds out about the legend of the Slip-Skin Hag, who is a “dark mother born from root, rock and tree” and is a “devourer of children.”

While Ben tries to figure out what to do, he’s invited to some local teen parties, where he gets closer to Mallory. The night that Ben is supposed to have dinner with Liam and Sara, Ben instead goes to one of the parties without telling Liam that he won’t be there for dinner.  Ben and Mallory get drunk and spend some time alone together, and some romantic sparks fly between the two of them. Unfortunately, just as Ben is about to lean in and kiss Mallory, he vomits. (It seems like there’s a vomit scene in almost every movie that has underage teenagers partying.)

While at the party, Ben ignores the numerous calls that he’s been getting from his father. By the time Ben comes home, Liam is furious, and they have an argument, where Ben calls Sara “that bitch you’re sleeping with.” Sara overhears Ben insult her, and she immediately leaves the house, but the argument puts a strain on Ben’s relationship with his father.  Sara and Ben eventually patch things up and make sincere efforts to be cordial to one another.

Things get even stranger after Ben comes home to unexpectedly find Dillon hiding in Ben’s bedroom. Dillon pleads with Ben not tell Dillon’s mother Abbie that he’s hiding there if Abbie comes looking for him. Of course, she does go looking for him. What happens after that is where the movie starts to derail.

The rest of the story has major plot holes where the existence of certain people in the story are denied by others, and Ben is made to feel like he’s going crazy because he seems to be the only one who remembers that these people have existed. It’s not as if Ben has any supernatural powers, but you’d have to believe that an entire community, not just one household, has collective amnesia about these “disappearing” people. And that doesn’t make sense, given that it contradicts people’s memories in later parts of the story.

As for why Ben’s father doesn’t believe Ben’s claims that something sinister is happening at the house next door, it’s explained by Ben coming home late from the parties, and his father assumes that Ben is high on drugs. Given Ben’s troubled past that’s revealed in the movie, his father’s assumption actually makes sense.

After Ben comes home from a party where he was humiliated by group prank led by Gage, something happens that leads the movie down an even more ridiculous and messy path to the point of no return. There’s a surprise plot twist at the very end that makes absolutely no sense. And the very last shot in the movie is a horror-movie cliché, since it sets up the idea that there could be a sequel. (Don’t count on a sequel, since this movie won’t be a sleeper hit or even a cult classic.)

The best parts of “The Wretched” are how the movie builds suspense for the first two-thirds of the film before the story goes downhill into incoherent, poorly edited chaos. The visual effects (which are mostly practical, since the movie doesn’t rely too heavily on CGI) give the movie its most terrifying moments, since “The Wretched” is more in-your-face horror than psychological horror. Madelyn Stunenkel plays The Wretch witch monster in the film. All of the cast’s acting in “The Wretched” is average.

“The Wretched” is the Pierce Brothers’ second feature-length film as directors, after their 2011 zombie flick “Deadheads,” which made the rounds at several film festivals that year but was never released in theaters. (“Deadheads” is now available on home video.) Brett and Drew Pierce are the sons of visual-effects artist Bart Pierce, who did uncredited work on Sam Raimi’s 1981 classic horror flick “The Evil Dead.”

Having a father with a visual-effects background partially explains why the visual effects in “The Wretched” are the more well-crafted parts of the movie. The cinematography by Conor Murphy also achieves the intended atmosphere of voyeurism and terror throughout most of the film. But setting up the right visual environment in a movie is a wasted effort if the story isn’t very good and the editing is sloppy. The Pierce Brothers show hints of potentially making a major breakout film, but “The Wretched” is not that movie.

IFC Film/IFC Midnight released “The Wretched” on digital and VOD and ins select U.S. drive-in theaters on May 1, 2020.

 

 

 

Kroger temporarily removes pre-cut melons from stores in Michigan and Indiana due to possible health risk

June 8, 2018

The following is a press release from Kroger:

The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) said today it is withdrawing Kroger pre-cut cantaloupe, pre-cut watermelon and pre-cut melon mixes sold in its Indiana and Michigan retail stores due to possible contamination from a strain of Salmonella Adelaide.

On June 7, the company was informed by the CDC and FDA that multiple illnesses have been reported in connection with this outbreak. The products implicated were limited to select Kroger, Jay C, Owen’s and Pay Less stores in Indiana and Michigan, and were provided by a third-party supplier that is fully cooperating with the investigation.

Although the reported illness onset ended on May 28 and the shelf life on these products is very limited, out of an abundance of caution Kroger immediately removed these products from its stores and has temporarily suspended shipment of any new products from this supplier. This withdrawal does not affect other pre-cut fruit available in stores.

Kroger has withdrawn from sale the following items:

Product

UPC

Sell-By Dates:

Size

MELON SPEARS TRIO

82676613959

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

16 oz.

FRUIT SPEARS MIXED

82676613960

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

16 oz. 

WATERMELON SPEARS

82676613962

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

16 oz. 

MELON MEDLEY – SMALL

82676613980

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

10 oz.

WATERMELON CHUNKS – SMALL

82676613985

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

10 oz.

CANTALOUPE CHUNKS – SMALL

82676614000

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

10 oz.

HONEYDEW CHUNKS – SMALL

82676614001

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

10 oz.

CANTALOUPE CHUNKS

82676614006

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

24 oz.

MELON MIX

82676614007

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

24 oz.

WATERMELON CHUNKS

82676614008

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

24 oz.

WATERMELON CHUNKS

82676614014

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

48 oz.

FRUIT SNACK TRAY

82676614015

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

40 oz.

FRUIT MEDLEY

82676614017

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

10 oz.

FRUIT MEDLEY

82676614024

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

24 oz.

FRUIT MEDLEY

82676614030

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

48 oz.

SMALL FRUIT TRAY W/ DIP

82676614538

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

26.75 oz.

LARGE FRUIT TRAY W/ DIP

82676614539

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

63.0 oz.

FRUIT TRAY W/WATERMELON

82676618549

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

64.75 oz.

FRUIT FIESTA SALAD

82676618564

6/11/18 AND BEFORE

18 oz.

Customers who have purchased the above products from the company’s Indiana and Michiganstore locations should not consume them and should return them to a store for a full refund or replacement.

Customers who have questions may contact Kroger at 1-800-KROGERS.

At The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are dedicated to our Purpose: to Feed the Human Spirit™. We are nearly half a million associates who serve nine million customers daily through a seamless digital shopping experience and 2,800 retail food stores under a variety of banner names, serving America through food inspiration and uplift, and creating #ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities by 2025. To learn more about us, visit our newsroom and investor relations site.

SOURCE The Kroger Co.

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